Streamlined
by ekourege
Summary: It was quiet here, eerily silent, like the spliced moment after a pin was dropped. He found himself cold, chilled, even though there was no wind, no snow. The sun was out. It was still. Even though, all around him, the world moved and whirled and flickered. It was creepy, disturbing, even. This reflection, made of ice and mimicry. Izuku felt nothing but relief at the sight of it


Title: Streamlined

Rating: T

Fandom: BNHA

Chapter: 1/1

Summary:

It was quiet here, eerily silent, like the spliced moment after a pin was dropped. He found himself cold, chilled, even though there was no wind, no snow. The sun was out.

It was still. Even though, all around him, the world moved and whirled and flickered.

It was creepy, disturbing, even. This reflection, made of ice and mimicry.

Izuku felt nothing but relief at the sight of it.

* * *

Djskfksnsls I'm sorry I just really love this format. Writing like this is really fun and I think I excel with it.

I wasn't gonna write this. I don't have an outline or even a coherent idea for it. But I'll be on a plane for a couple hours, so why not?

(I could also work on my other fics but uhhhh, nah. My writing stuff was in the overhead bin, meaning my outlines were not on my person. If I'm writing something and I have an outline, you can be damn sure I'm gonna use it. A single chapter outline can take hours to lay out. 30 minutes is the quickest I've been able to do it, so there's no way I'm gonna waste that work.)

This is similar to Refraction, I think. Or, in the same vein. The concepts are… sort of similar? But different, and this time I'll be veering off of canon a little. This will probably end up shorter than Refraction, mostly because I'm just writing it to pass the time.

I could've also uh. Made a snippet for Refraction. But I didn't. This is just who I am as a person and you all will have to accept this.

Note: I am shamelessly borrowing the concept from my CoC outlines. Where, what, and why? You'll just have to wait and see. This basically just… explains it? In a weird way. Idk. Y'all will see.

Anyway uhhh, enjoy?

* * *

Nothing in this world came easy. Or free, for that matter. This was a lesson Izuku learned early - that life just wasn't _fair._ It was a jumble of a million different converging variables, and in one area where you struck gold, in another, you'd lose all your chips.

Usually, he found, in quick succession. A constant give and take, for everything good there must be something bad.

Fairness had nothing to do with it, no matter how worthy you were.

It was the same with his... quirk. (Could it be called that? It was so… expansive, and the scope of what he could _do_ was far beyond the normal limitations of a quirk, far beyond the perimeters of his person.

There was _also_ the extra toe joint. There certainly was that.)

On one hand, it was an escape, one easy and accessible. It was solitary and comforting, in an odd way.

It was a secret, one only Izuku knew, had felt, had experienced and marveled at.

Kacchan did not know this. His mother did not know this. His bullies, his classmates, and his teachers did not know this. Even All Might, Izuku was pretty sure, did not know this.

He had never met anyone on the _O_ _ _ther_ side, _no one who was really there and _aware_ , anyway.

It was his greatest secret.

It was also his greatest fear.

The other side was a reflection, something that most could only catch glimpses of, and never in a way that struck them in _just_ the right way so that it revealed its secrets to them.

For Izuku, it was so easy to _slip._

Izuku, who had the knowledge and experience under his belt, knew the _truth_ and what was on the _other side,_ had to be careful. Tiptoe along the streets avoid rain puddles and glass windows, on days when you could see your reflection so crystal clear, without the sun to provide you stability, a good grip on reality.

His room was devoid of mirrors. The only one he kept was in the bathroom.

He kept his items matte, avoided shiny plastics, put a rubber case on his smartphone.

(Not that he used it all that much, anyway. His fingers would slip through, get caught in the screen. So, instead, he mostly used a cheap, outdated flip phone.

Izuku was _very_ careful not to let his mom know he wasn't using the smartphone, keeping it in his hands whenever he was in the room with her, fingers raised ever so slightly, just so that they'd look natural, but they wouldn't fall through.)

The curtains stayed closed, clothes with reflective buttons on them stayed firmly at the back of his closet.

If he could see himself in it, it was nearly unusable to him.

If he wasn't careful, he'd find himself gone, fallen through into crevices of the _O_ _ _ther_ side _he couldn't escape.

Gone, slipping through the cracks of this plane, like rain droplets collecting in a gutter.

That wasn't to stay he _always_ knew that, though.

* * *

It was a deep memory, the first time that Izuku slipped.

The edges of it were blurred in his mind, hazy and lacking in detail. Lacking in the kind of awareness grown into over time, the kind where knowledge of the world began to unfurl all around you, ideas and concepts and places unfolding, places outside of your immediate vicinity.

It starts with rain, presumably. The kind of rain that drizzled fat droplets onto gritty concrete, pooling in the cracks in the asphalt and collecting along the sides of roads, a temporary river draining into the gutter.

Izuku, distantly, vaguely, wonders where, exactly, the water goes.

It's dark, not sunny like it usually is when Izuku goes outside. The path to a destination now unknown is preceded by _grey grey grey_ , all spindly concrete walls and glass panels larger than Izuku himself. His mother is with him usually, his hand clasped snugly into her larger ones (and briefly, he has to marvel. How could anyone grow so _big_?) but this time, she is not around.

It's just Izuku, trekking down cold stone, watching his feet step along the path and the creases in the big blocks of sidewalk pass in succession. For such a busy busy busy place, it was startlingly quiet. (and weren't there usually so many people here? Every time Izuku went this way he'd have to move around them, even run under their legs! His mother would get mad if he did that, but wasn't bumping into them worse?)

Maybe the memories of _people_ were lost to time, he didn't know.

Then, suddenly, as if time skipped along like a film reel, there was water, and a lot of it.

A puddle.

His mother had taught him several lessons very well. Never go into the street, unless there was a crosswalk there. (He'd asked her what that was, and after attempting and failing to explain it to him, told him that he'd know he'd found one when large groups of people walked that way.) Do not talk to strangers you don't know. Do not go with them. If you get cut or start to bleed, there are band-aids in your bag. Be careful with your clothing, or else you will ruin them.

Izuku followed these rules to a T, careful to avoid walking in the areas with the cars and not talk to weird adults. However, he was faced with a dilemma - one that had him panicking.

Getting his pants and shoes wet could _ruin_ them, and it'd make his mother _angry._ Izuku hated it when she was angry. It meant no snacks after dinner, and his bedtime came early.

...But, in order to avoid the water, he'd have to go into the street, and he could get hurt. (Cars went fast, didn't they?)

Eventually, Izuku decided, that he'd rather his mother be _mad_ than _sad_. Her being sad meant she'd cry, and the Izuku could cry, and everything would be bad.

It'd be best to brave the water.

Izuku stood there for a moment, unsure of how he would approach the crossing, but forces himself to steady. Then, he jerks for a moment, hesitant, before pushing off in a mighty leap.

His goal was _over_ the puddle, or at least near the end of it.

He did not go over the puddle. In fact, he barely got halfway over it before dropping into it.

Izuku shrieks as little, preemptively wincing as he knew he'd be soaked in a few moments. He clings to his backpack straps, squeezing his eyes shut and gritting his teeth.

He does not get wet. There is no splash, no small storm of icy water as he is plunged into the puddle. His clothes do not get soaked, Izuku does not end up on his rear end, half submerged in gritty rainwater.

Instead, he falls _through_ it. The sensation is odd, utterly foreign.

It's like slipping without the landing, without the jolt to finish the motion. It's like hanging in midair like life froze and everything stopped moving, leaving your veins shooting adrenaline and synapses firing and projecting fear, even as your bones lighten and your lungs chill.

When Izuku slowly opens his eyes, he finds himself somewhere _else._

It's silent, desolate.

The buildings are the same, concrete buildings taller than Izuku could see, sprawling sidewalks stretching out among the jungle of city blocks. But something is… different.

Izuku gets to his feet, finding himself sat just a few inches away from the puddle water.

On the other side, the side he was trying to jump to.

His head was swiveling, his discomfort growing. Unease bubbling in his gut as he wrung his hands together, pulling at his fingers.

It was cold. It was quiet. It wasn't _natural._ Something about it was… off.

Izuku sniffled. "...Hello? Is anyone there?"

No one answered. His voice echoed, bouncing up the buildings and fading into the overcast sky.

* * *

Returning from the _Other side_ had initially been a panicked hell. Izuku could vaguely recall panic pushing at his throat, of being short of breath, crying and running in near circles. He wasn't sure where he was going, what he was looking for, only that he _needed_ to look.

He'd found his way home again by purely by accident. With his breath finally abandoning him, Izuku had been forced to slow to a stop in hopes of catching it once again. He'd put his hand up against a large panel of glass, leaning most of his weight on it. While it had only taken a single moment to lean against the window, it had taken only another for Izuku to slip through again.

It'd grown dark while he was lost in the reflection, and so when he'd fallen back into regular reality (and the world suddenly felt _right_ again-) the streets were mostly devoid of life, with the exception of the occasional group of drunk adults, or people slinking down the streets, likely maneuvering their way to the place of their night shift jobs.

He could vividly recall the way the streetlights reflected on the wet, slick roads, making the ground shimmer. Yet, the city was mostly subdued, areas the sun would normally illuminate like a giant spotlight, are again thrown into shadow, the curtain closed on those spaces until the sun chose to rise again.

Thus, light was left to store owners who ran businesses at midnight, after the sun's glare had receded and painted the world in grey-blues and color-eating blacks. Neon lights danced and

dazzled over the doors of shops, beckoning all caught in the dark to seek shelter in its artificial, septic light.

Izuku had never been allowed outside when it got dark like this.

By this time, he was in bed, sleepily looking out the window and letting the stillness lull him to sleep.

His breath hitched.

He was scared, Izuku remembered.

Eventually, he'd decided to retrace his steps, (avoiding puddles, veering into the street if he had to), finding his way home, even if he cried almost the entire way.

As it turns out, his mother had been just as scared as he was, crying and hugging him as soon as he shuffled through the door.

(And, subsequently, grounding him for almost an entire _month_.)

* * *

The first few nights _after,_ Izuku had tried to reconcile what he'd seen as a scary, foreign place willing to eat him up with the knowledge that the _Other side_ was also probably his quirk. His terrifying, lonely, quirk.

(Obviously. What else _could_ it be?)

A few days turned into a few weeks, and then into a few months, the time since he was forced to slot the knowledge of the _Other place_ into his mind, let it sink into his consciousness and take hold.

(Quirk. Quirk. It was his quirk, right?)

He knew he'd have to tell his mom, eventually. As at the time when he'd stumbled back into the apartment, spooked and teary-eyed, he'd found himself unwilling to talk about it. After the verdict given on his punishment, his mother had asked where he'd been, and he'd found himself unable to answer her, the words too _confused_ and _terrified_ to explain. He'd just shook his head at her, and went to his room to try and sleep it off, hoping that maybe he'd forget about it when he woke up.

He didn't, and unsurprisingly, he'd had nightmares that night.

He woke up the next morning with the memories of yesterday still fresh in his mind, the silence of the place howling in his ears and the vivid _wrongness_ of the place rattling around in his skull.

And ever since that time, Izuku hadn't managed to say even a word about his quirk.

He tried, of course. Very hard. Little moments of bubbling euphoria, where his mind shouted with glee _'I got my quirk! I got my quirk early!',_ would push him into approaching his mother about it. The words and excited gibberish would cycle through his mind, skate past by his eyes, impulsively egging him on, to _tell someone_.

The only someone around was, of course, his mother. However, every time he'd open his mouth to confess and babble and word vomit this obvious quirk activation story, the words that once rewired his brain into tell tell tell, skittered away light frightened animals, retreating into his mind.

His mind would empty, like a bucket draining from a crack in the bottom. His mouth would run dry, suddenly heavy in the way it was shut. His attempt would be abandoned soon after that.

"Besides," he would tell himself consolingly, "it's not like I'm ever going in there again, right? Even if it _is_ my quirk..."

* * *

One day, nearly a year after he'd slipped into the other side, his mother got worried.

His quirk hasn't activated yet, she'd said. Just a routine checkup to make sure everything is fine, she told him, squeezing his hand so tight he squirmed in discomfort.

As it turns out, Izuku had a mutation.

One that meant he didn't have a quirk.

He was quirkless.

(So what did that say about the _Other side_?)

* * *

He was wrong about both lines of thought. It wasn't a quirk, the doctor had said he couldn't have one, and he'd eventually went in again - even though it'd been by accident. That's, in all honesty, what slipping _was_ : something you'd do unintentionally, as a result of a slippery surface or unsure footing. He'd only managed to hold out for a year before he'd slipped again.

But this time was different.

This time, the _fear_ he'd originally experienced was quickly overtaken with interest.

Izuku, who had been so preoccupied with _escape_ the first time he'd slipped, had missed quite a bit.

This time, he found that the _Other side_ \- _wrong_ though it may feel - was not out to actively hurt or consume anything. It was merely some sort of sprawling reflection of his home city (and presumably the rest of the world.).

It was just there. Nothing more, nothing less.

He discovered that that didn't mean it wasn't dangerous, though.

Navigating the mirrored plane was like walking in a space where everything had suddenly been shifted a couple inches to the right. It wasn't enough of a difference to where you could really notice it, but just enough to where you felt it, and it tended to get in the way.

He found himself dodging more poles and walls than he thought he'd have to - given that they were all perfectly visible, and everything _looked_ the same as it did in the real world.

The area was also remarkably easy to get lost in. Even though all the streets signs read the same as they did in the real world - warped as they were - and all the familiar, tangible landmarks were there, it always felt like you were just a little off, like you were _close_ to the right place but never really there.

It was so easy to keep going, to take one too many twists and turns and travel deeper and deeper into the city too perfect to be real.

To get so lost that you could never wind your way back. If he wasn't careful - didn't pay attention, this realm could trap him. And he'd _never_ find his way back to where he wanted to be.

Izuku then started to notice how mirrors and other clearly reflective surfaces had a peculiar quality to them. Somehow, they just seemed to… stick out. On the _Other side,_ They were the easiest thing to see, the first thing he tended to notice. They shined in just the right way, glimmered so that they caught his eyes.

And the final thing:

No one was there.

 _'Er - well,'_ Izuku jerkily corrected himself, _'that's not really true.'_

It would be more accurate to say that no one there was aware of it - or of Izuku. The streets were mostly empty, as the only cars or bicycles seen were those that were parked. However, when people passed by a reflective surface - their visaged, faded and washed out - would appear on the _Other side_. They'd flicker and waver, like the reflective world was struggling to mirror them there, and could only manage it for as long as they were directly in front of it.

Izuku couldn't interact with what was coming to call their _Mirror Ghosts_ , either.

Oh, he'd tried. At first, he called out to them, just trying to get their attention. He wanted to know if they _knew,_ ask what this place _was_ , and why they were _here_.

Why it existed in the first place.

When a person passed a reflection and suddenly flickered into view, Izuku had approached them. At first, he'd assumed his approach would call their attention, but, weirdly, it didn't.

The reflection, even as he skittered behind them in order to keep pace, suddenly dispersed, gone as if they'd never been there. Izuku reached out, waving his hand through the area where a person had been a moment before, only to be met with empty space.

Confused, Izuku had shrugged and put that person out of his mind, immediately locking onto the next person. This time, Izuku used his voice.

"Um, excuse me?" He'd said, cautiously.

The person ignored him. He went on to the next.

"Uh - hi -"

"Hello!"

"Sir!"

"Ma'am?"

Again and again, he'd shouted, pleaded, raged for acknowledgment. And yet - nothing. None of them even looked at him, some disappearing before he could even finish his sentence. Bewildered by the way only he seemed stable, like a real physical entity in this space, he reached out to touch one-

-only for his hand to go straight through them.

Izuku stumbled, not expecting the reflections to be completely intangible. A pins and needles sensation encompassed the areas where he'd made contact with the shadow, the thing that looked human but _wasn't_ \- was merely a mockery of one. The sensation prickled, wasn't painful so much as intense and uncomfortable, only that it caused the hair on his arms and the nape of his neck to rise, tense and tight.

He decided very quickly after that not to touch the mirror ghosts ever again.

Then, he'd noticed that, no matter how many reflections were gesturing, washed out lips flapping… no sound ever came out.

Izuku couldn't hear them, and going by his previous attempts to communicate with them, they couldn't hear him, either.

In fact, the only noise - other than the hollow howling of the city resting in the backs of his ears - was Izuku himself.

His shoes sliding across concrete sidewalks, his muttered words bouncing off of still, hulking masses of concrete and stone, the slip and shift of his clothing as he walked.

He shuffled to a stop, the weirdness of this place sending him deep in thought as his young mind tried to process and accept the weird place he'd found himself in for the second time. His head turned to the side, staring deeply into one of the wide glass panes of an office building. It was then that he noticed something strange.

There was no reflection of Izuku. Even though he was standing firmly in front of the window, he could not see even an inch of his own form. Not even an outline, or an impression.

It was as if he'd been cut out of reality, his existence smoothed over.

Suddenly invisible.

* * *

Soon after his second expedition, as he'd taken to calling them, Izuku had convinced his mother into purchasing a couple notebook. Despite the fact that he couldn't write well yet, she'd finally caved, and within a couple days he'd had a brand new set of notebooks stacked on his desk, just waiting to be cracked open and written in.

He'd picked two to start with, tucking the others away for later use. One was for his thoughts and theories about various heroes, so he had a place where he could dump his thought process into without annoying anyone or being ignored.

(His mother acted like she was listening, head bobbing occasionally and insert the occasional hum as she went about her business, but he knew better.

No one at school listened, so why would she?)

The other was for his findings and observations about the Other side. He'd come to the startling realization that he may be the only to know - or at least be able to access - the mirrored plane.

So that meant it was his _duty_ to record his findings, both for himself later on down the road and for others - those who couldn't see it for themselves, or even know of it.

His thirst for knowledge awoke suddenly, impulses drumming up inside of him. His senses yelled and hyperfocused on the Other side, urging him to _slip_ through and unravel the mysteries of it all. He wanted to dig his fingers into the meat of the place and figure it out, rip the answers out if he had to.

Izuku wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not.

But it was a feverish need that consumed him, dogged his steps for a good couple years, before subsiding, thirst managed in a way that allowed Izuku to focus on things that weren't the next mystery waiting to be discovered in the _Other side._

He found that it became an escape, too. He'd lost all of his friends and amiability of his classmates after they'd found out he was quirkless.

(He'd only wanted to tell Kacchan, only wanted Kacchan to know.

But, instead, Kacchan had gone and told everyone, shouted his worthlessness to the heavens as he ground Izuku under his heel.

He'd thought they were _friends-_ )

Kacchan had started bullying him, a near constant barraging of cutting words and lingering bruises that the _Other side_ chilled, like ice over his wounds. A cold, still sort of comfort.

Sometimes, Izuku wished he could simply stay on the other side forever, and spend all his time exploring a place only he knew of. But thoughts of his mother would draw him back, warmth and the sound of life would send him back like a moth to a bright light - flinging itself again and again at what would only kill it.

There's was also the fact that he would starve. None of the reflected food was edible and would crumble on his tongue, dissolving into nothing.

The food he'd misplaced would appear on the stand as if it'd never been moved.

So he only went for long trips, never more than a day as his mother would worry and sleep on the _Other side_ was nearly impossible. Even if you could find somewhere comfortable enough to rest, you'd find yourself with an uncomfortable sense of unease if you tried to sleep. Like you wouldn't wake up. Or, if you did, you'd find yourself unraveled, no longer a physical being of flesh and blood and bone.

Izuku had, with noticeable amounts of shame, skipped school a number of times to slip.

One once had been by accident, when he'd smacked into a mirror and _slipped_ through, and had gotten distracted enough to miss some school before he'd realized what he was doing.

The other times, Izuku had just needed to get away, to escape.

Kacchan and his classmates had made going to school a very daunting activity, one he endured day after day, forced to break and shatter and chip over and over again, picking up the pieces at the end of each day and attempting to reassemble them in just the right way.

Sometimes, his courage faltered, and he fled to the one place where no one - including consequences - could follow, if only for a little while. He'd pull out his fifth notebook on the Other side, scribbling down whatever observations he'd managed to make that day, even though the words wrote themselves backward.

He knew that once he left, the words would go back to normal. As long as he wrote on the lines, it would look fine.

(It was harder than he'd thought it'd be to get the hang of it, and for a while, he'd written only in pencil.)

Other times, Izuku would simply walk around, the chill and silence easing his anxiety in a way that before they'd only increase it.

He'd gotten used to the mirrored world, over time. Its oddness was calming, weird in a familiar way that was more intriguing than frightening.

Today, Kacchan had chased him into the comforting embrace of the mirrors. Lunchtime had found Izuku nervously navigating the halls, hoping to avoid running into Kacchan and his groupies. He'd carefully made his way through the halls, finding a storage closet roomy enough that Izuku could comfortably tuck himself inside of it, out of the way and in a place discrete enough that he'd be left alone.

Unfortunately, he hadn't been fast enough to enter it, as Kacchan caught him entering it while sauntering down the hallway.

It had only taken a leering snarl of _Deku!_ for Izuku to jolt into awareness, nerves sizzling.

Another squeaky step of Kacchan's sneakers and Izuku's muscles pulsed, and Izuku bolted.

He was off in a flash, sprinting down the hall and around the corner. His actions, inevitably, provoked Kacchan into making chase, spitting and cursing and driving knives into his skin with his every word. Izuku knew he couldn't outrun him, that Kacchan was had more endurance, more agility, more stamina than he did, but he tried to, anyway.

He flung open the door to the boys' bathroom, flinging himself inside, before frantically looking around for somewhere to hide.

Then, he spotted the mirrors. He made a mad dash for them, grappling at the sink and hauling himself onto it, fingers sliding through it just as the door was blown open, His (ex-)childhood friend's sneering face in plain view, head cocked and his ruby-red eyes glinting in malicious glee.

But Izuku had already won.

Izuku _slipped._

And then he was on the other side, watching his bullies' shadows investigate the bathroom, kicking the stalls open and gesturing wildly. They left, acting as if Izuku hadn't even been there, caught red-handed just as he was about to make the jump.

For some reason, if he was spotted while _slipping_ , he'd go completely unnoticed. Even if he screamed, flailed, slipped in the person's direct line of sight, they would not notice.

It was as if just being in contact with the _Other side_ made him invisible, cloaked him in darkness and hidden knowledge, _forbidden_ knowledge.

Izuku still hadn't told anyone of the mirrored realm, and even though all he knew was written in his notebooks, he tended to keep those on him at all times.

Even though he'd started writing them as a way to share his knowledge, he'd grown weary of exposing anything of himself or his thoughts (the ones he didn't accidentally mumble, that is) to anyone, even his mom.

They all knew he had secrets, but right now he'd rather die than reveal them to anyone.

(They'd surely laugh. Laugh and pity the poor quirkless _boy_ , who was twelve and still making of fantasy stories to make up for his lack of quirk - his lack of _worth_.)

Izuku was left alone in the reflected school bathroom, bento is one hand and all his secrets under the firm protections of the rules of the _Other side_. Adrenaline pumped through his veins, even as his skin grew colder.

The bathroom was lonely, on the other side, and Izuku was quick to evacuate the area. He pushed open the door and walked out, his bulky red sneakers squeaking on the polished floors. Izuku, knowing he couldn't be _hurt_ here, untensed, pulling open his shiny new backpack.

He fished out his Recordings notebook from its depths and flipped it open. This was the perfect opportunity for Izuku to test a few things.

This was the first time he'd actually slipped while inside the school building. Usually, he'd _slip_ before school or slip in the school courtyard, jumping through an outside window and coming out of the other side, landing back onto reflected grass he'd just jumped off of.

When he'd attempted to enter the school from the outside, he'd opened the doors up only to find that the front of the room could be seen, the rest lost to the darkness present when the _Other side_ had gaps it couldn't fill.

This time, he'd see if he could leave the building, and enter it again without the darkness showing up. So he power walked towards where the stairs were, taking the steps down two at a time, before weaving his way towards the main doors.

It involved a lot of twists and turns, as Izuku found himself making wrong turns more than once, but he quickly corrected his errors and, soon enough, stood in front of the doors.

He took a deep breath, excitement pulsing in his veins, and pushed the doors open. He quickly stepped out, letting the door go and swing shut behind him. Once firmly shut, Izuku whirled around, pen and notebook out, and hauled open the door again.

He peered inside and… all the detail from before, the places he'd just walked by not two minutes ago, the halls he'd just sped walked through... gone, cloaked in the cloying darkness that was the signature masking tactic of the _Other side._

" _Yes,_ " Izuku hissed, absolutely delighted. "I was right! My theory is correct!" Immediately, his pen is moving, scrawling down the setup, results, and meaning of the experiment, rambling as he did so.

"So, this means that my observations were correct. Each mirror creates its own scope of reflective knowledge, and buildings act as... pocket dimensions? Pockets within the larger one, inside but disconnected from the larger sections of it… so that means, in order to get inside one of these pocket dimensions, I'd have to enter them directly. Through indoor mirrors, maybe? And why can't I just jump into the pockets directly from the windows on the outside of the school?"

He furiously recorded his findings for a few minutes longer, thought process ringing through the hollow air and bouncing off what he now knows is a hollow building, another mimicry of real and tangible.

Once done, Izuku cursed his luck.

"Oh… god damn it!" he shouted, frustrated with a realization he should have known earlier. If he couldn't enter the dimension he left just a few minutes ago... Izuku couldn't get back to the real world from the bathroom mirrors.

Meaning he'd have to jump through an outside window and end up on the outside. In the schoolyard.

Where there were cameras.

 _Cameras that could catch him skipping class,_ even if they didn't know how he got there.

It best that he just… avoid campus for now. He'd already been marked present that morning, so even if he didn't show up to class for the rest of the day, they'd likely assume he was there, but unnoticed. That or he'd spent the rest of the office stuffed in a locker or in the nurse's office.

(He was quirkless, after all.)

If he could just leave campus, and avoid getting caught for the rest of the school day, he'd _probably_ be in the clear. It was never a guaranteed thing, but his chances of escaping punishment were high.

Plus, he's done this many times before, so he pretty much knew the drill by now.

Izuku closed the notebook with a shark snap, sticking his pen in his pocket and checking his watch.

He'd stopped trying to use his phone on the _Other side_ after he'd broken two phones in the years previous. Usually, they just simply wouldn't work in this dimension, reduced to hunks of metal and plastic at zero charge. There was no real electricity, even if it appears like there was - going by the lights inside of buildings, but when he'd attempted to plug something in, it hadn't even buzzed with the notification that there was a current coming into the wire. With one phone, it simply never turned on again, even after leaving the other side.

(It was, strangely enough, the one he'd attempted to plug in. He'd made sure to jot that down in his notes, along with the effects on the device the _Other side_ had made.)

The other, when he'd charged it upon leaving the mirrored dimension, had flipped out. Icons and text broke, pages glitching and apps corrupting. The touchscreen became nearly unusable, and the device was soon rendered beyond saving, even when factory reset.

Since then, Izuku has left his phones alone, untouched and unmessed with, going so far as to keep both the smartphone and the flip phone buried deep in his bag and not in "direct" contact with the Other side.

It still ended up out of charge, but it seemed to work just fine.

Instead, Izuku had begged for a watch, waxing poetic about how he couldn't check his phone during class, or that he'd have to watch where he was going on the streets, lest he fall into a pothole and hit his head, or bump into Yakuza or… something.

Izuku was a terrible liar, but he was glad that it'd worked out anyway.

Watches worked just fine, analog watches, that was. Electrical watches seemed to freeze and die, without fail.

He'd had to replace a few watches, too.

It was a little into the period after lunch, the clock read. Though Izuku knew it was a few minutes behind.

The longer he stayed here, the larger this dimension lagged behind in the time. He hadn't noticed it at first, but as he stayed longer and longer, and became more adept at understanding the in's and out's of the realm, he became acutely aware of the dangers of lingering too long.

He would not test them.

… yet.

He'd traveled a few blocks from the school, searching for a good area to test his next experiment.

It had taken a while, but with a careful, strategic navigation of the streets - it was _never_ a good idea to wander - he'd managed to find somewhere secluded enough that if he actually managed to _affect_ the real world it wouldn't be a catastrophic event, but not enough to where he couldn't retrace his steps.

His next test would be whether or not there was a difference in the matter that made up the "walls" of the dimension, as he now knew, and if that made them more tangible.

(Best case scenario, he could take a piece of the mirror home with him, to the real world.)

The alleyway was dilapidated, gritty concrete reading to break. All in all, it was nearly the perfect space to test this. If he picked something up here, no one would notice it, but it wasn't small enough that just being near it made Izuku's blood pressure rise.

Hopefully, he wouldn't have too much trouble taking out a chunk of the wall. It didn't need to be very big, not even the size of a brick, but he didn't want to pick up what he thought was a chunk of wall, only to find that it was simply cracked asphalt, which would dissolve in his bag, leaving him with a failed experiment and nothing to show for it.

He sets down his bag and opens it once again, digging through it - carefully, carefully, don't expose the phones at all - and pulling out a small shovel.

Izuku had planned to do this experiment after school, but he figured that, since he was already here, now was a good of a time as any to move things along.

He stood up, shovel in hand, and approached the brick wall. He brought his hand up, pulled his arm back, and with all his might, struck the wall.

And did it again, and again. All in the same place. The action hurt his arms horribly, but it was worth it to see a chunk of the wall come loose, crack in the brick finally spitting out a brick chunk.

Crowing in success, Izuku scooped up the wall chunk in his free hand, rolling it in his hand. He brought it up to his face, observing each nook and cranny in it thoroughly, looking for any aspects of it that may be weird and off, particularly the part of the chunk in the wall, rather than the side facing the outside.

It looked… remarkably normal. He'd expected it to be somewhat weird, maybe a different color, or for the darkness to take hold on the back of it, the part unseen by his eyes.

But, no, it was a mundane brick chunk, which brought up just as many questions as it answered. Nonetheless, Izuku carefully transcribed his observations into his notebook and put it in the little plastic container he'd brought with him, sealing it completely before stowing it away in his bag.

He slid his backpack onto his shoulders again, notebook tucked under his arms, and turned to walk into the street and out of the alley the way he'd come in.

Only, that the _Mirror Ghosts_ were doing something… odd. They weren't moving in out and of existence like they usually did. Instead, they stayed still, clumping together while two scuffled.

He thought maybe it was some sort of fight, but upon closer inspection, he was that one of the scuffling pair was attempting to stab the other with its elongated nails.

 _'A villain attack!'_ Izuku realized with a gasp. The fight was likely one born out of self-defense, but it was one the victim was losing, going by the way the ghost was clutching its arm.

No one was doing anything. The heroes obviously weren't around, even if gawkers were.

Sometimes, the _Mirror Ghosts_ of people said more about a person than they actually did, even if the reflection and the person were "the same".

No one was going to do anything. The victim might _die_ , and only Izuku seemed aware of this very real consequence.

Before Izuku knew what he was doing, what was happening, he found his feet moving, sprinting towards the glass on the other side of the street. He _slipped_ into the real world once again, the weightless-groundless feeling encompassing him for a single moment before the _Other side_ spat him out, propelling him into reality where there was a very real villain attack occurring.

Undeterred, he found himself sprinting towards the villain.

 _'Oh my god,'_ Izuku thought, distantly. _'I'm going to die.'_ Then, suddenly, arms splayed out, he caught the villain by the side, roughly tackling them.

The villain yelped, nails retracted, and high on adrenaline, hands shaking, Izuku reached up and punched them in the face.

Granted, It wasn't a very hard punch, given his very little amounts of muscle and small physique, but it was enough to startle the villain into freezing for a few crucial seconds.

 _'Experiment number 403, attempting to successfully subdue a villain without a quirk. Hypothesis: It won't work.'_ Izuku thoughts, a bit hysterically, even as he panics and goes for the villain's hands, only managing to grab one of them in the fuss.

Izuku looks at the victim, eyes wide and fierce. _"Go!"_ he shouts.

Then, Izuku gasps in pain, because the villain has dug the nails on their other hand into his shoulder. Their nails broke skin, tore through clothes and drew blood. He chops the nails away with the hand not angling one of the villain's hands away from Izuku's person, snapping several of them in the process, though he managed to dislodge them all from his shoulder.

Izuku doesn't know what to do, how to _win,_ fruitlessly grappling with the villain for a few moments longer and quickly losing strength.

He thinks all is lost, that his hypothesis will prove correct, but then, Izuku realizes, how he can win.

The villain's quirk seems to be simply elongated nails, no extra strengthening mechanics or any sharpening to them. (Not to say that the nails weren't sharp and very Stabby, because Izuku's shoulder had been bleeding for a worryingly long time.) The nails also didn't even grow out very long. They could only grow a couple feet, max, by the looks of it, otherwise, Izuku would have been dead meat by now, and the victim wouldn't have been able to hold out for so long.

All Izuku really needed to do was keep the nails away from him while he tied the villain up, somehow.

He didn't have any rope on him, but he did have his blazer, and that would have to do, for now.

With renewed vigor, Izuku leaned all of his weight onto the villain, hand like a striking snake as the snatched up the villain's hands once again. He made sure to bend them the wrong way, up and stretching painfully. The villain cursed and groaned and spat vile, hateful words at him.

(And no one came to his aid, despite the fact this could have been over by now if the group had _helped_.)

All the while, Izuku fumbled with the buttons on this blazer, practically tearing it off of him. He, luckily, wore an undershirt, so no one had to see his pitifully smooth chest as he attempted to tie the blazer around the villain's hands.

Despite the fact it had looked easy in the movies, in real life it was much more difficult. The villain wriggled and elbowed and attempted to injure him at every turn.

Izuku wondered, somewhere in the back of his mind, how he'd managed to keep the villain down this long, and why no heroes had come to his aid.

Nevertheless, he carried on, managing to tie a good knot around the villain's hands with only his teeth and the tips of his fingers.

With the villain's main weapon now taken care of, Izuku just hand to wait for the heroes. Or the police.

Whichever came first.

He didn't have to wait long.

The victim had come back with none other than _All Might_ in tow. The man was blabbering on and on about how there was a kid probably dying, up until he spotted an out-of-breath, frazzled and _bleeding_ Midoriya, practically laying on top of the villain - whose stabby hands were tied.

From there, everything was a whirl of ambulances and scoldings by heroes along with backhanded praise.

Izuku, for the duration, felt like he was on the verge of a meltdown, tearing up in regular intervals before forcing himself to _keep control._

The only moment of clarity was when his wounds had been taken care of, the villain arrested, and his mom called - thus proving him ready to be released from the ironclad grip of the EMTs. He'd shuffled on his backpack, ripped and in need of replacement, and started to make his way home, only to be stopped by All Might.

"You did a very heroic deed, my boy!" All Might began, hands on his hips. "Though, since you are quirkless, it's best that you leave heroism to the quirked!"

 _...Ouch._

All Might laughed nervously, quickly moving on with the conversation. "I apologize if this ends up an odd question, but you looked familiar for a reason I could not place until now! Midoriya… you say you're quirkless, yes? Well, once before, I could have sworn I've seen you do something odd. You see, I may have spotted you - or at least someone similar! - climbing out of a window? Er - I don't mean an open one! I am of the utmost certainty that it was out of the window pane itself!

If that was you, could you explain to me how that is not a quirk?"

 _'Oh, shit.'_ Izuku thought, dazed for the second time that day. _'He saw.'_

 _"How did you see?"_ Izuku breathes.

* * *

If ya wanna keep up (or at least be In the Know) about my future writing endeavors, update schedules, get snippets of my writing, as well as me ranting about having to Do The Writing Thing, my tumblr blog is ekourege.

Thanks 4 reading my rambly content, tell me what you thought about it, if you want.

EDIT: Apologies to any who encountered the formatting complication, this was crossposted on ao3 and html does NOT bode well here.


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